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Image by REGIERUNGonline
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, has been videoblogging for more than a month. |
German chancellor
Angela Merkel probably was the first high-level politician to start her own
video podcast over a month ago. It's perfect public relations, although the first issues were still stiff and more like TV presentations. Her first show was ridiculed on
YouTube.
Merkel's commitment to blogging perhaps is more serious than anybody thought at first. The popular videoblog Xolo.tv was able to get a long interview with her about videoblogging. You can watch it on their site today. Don't expect any tough questions, however.
No question -- no German chancellor (or perhaps any national leader anywhere) has ever before granted an interview to a videoblogger. It's fantastic. I can understand that it must be overwhelming for a blogger to be admitted into the Bundeskanzleramt (Germany's federal chancellery) and to be shown around by the chancellor herself.
Isn't it astonishing that a chancellor would consent to be interviewed by a blogger -- maybe even in preference to an interview by a traditional journalist? Is it possible that the German government's PR officials calculated that such a move would probably generate positive feedback?
In some ways the Xylo-TV interview is the perfect follow-up to the World Cup craze we recently experienced here in Germany. It's a continuation of the theme: "We're all wonderful, our guests are wonderful, let's party and forget about misfortunes that might exist anywhere."
I'm sorry, I don't want to be a killjoy. But that's too much naive enthusiasm for me. I think that bloggers -- like journalists, like everybody -- should remember that there is no free lunch. No chancellor invites anyone on the spur of the moment.
Therefore, I think that in a democracy anybody who gets the chance to interview the highest representative of a government is obliged to ask questions that others don't have the opportunity to ask.
Am I old fashioned? Perhaps. All I can say is that we'll never know what would have happened if the first blogger who interviewed our chancellor had dared to ask one tough question. Perhaps another blogger will get a chance and we'll find out how that works.
